Ben Rosenbloom's Boring Machine

I'm back with another readthrough of my rpg archives! It's a little bit of a stretch to say TUMULUS 5 is really "archival" reading - this is the winter 2025 issue! That's right now! (Or it was when I started writing this blogpost - the spring 2026 issue drops very soon I believe). I was gifted a year's subscription for the winter holidays (thank you Nate!), and got a chance to read it at the turn of the year. TUMULUS  is a quarterly magazine by Skeleton Code Machine. I don't have the back issues to compare to, but the copy tells us we can expect individual issues to run ~40-60 pages with illustration. The contents of those pages are a little variable, but the idea I get is that we can expect "game-stuff" in general - some theory, perhaps some reviews, maybe even some little games. The back of the issue has a full page ad for the magazine (more on this in just a moment), pitched as "quarterly inspiration, games, design ideas, and more." ...

Whale Roads   was released December 2025. It's a "zine" that's a phenomenal labor of love and (in my entirely biased opinion) an extremely cool compilation of play reports, GM asides, player notes, and game materials, from the year-long West Marches / open table game of Wolves Upon the Coast , by Luke Gearing, organized through the Ranged Touch discord server. I was one of 30+ players, I wound up serving as the table's "quartermaster," and I was one of a handful of editors who worked on assembling the final zine, so I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on my experience!

Adventure Calls took a break for April, so I thought I'd fill the time with another Archive Delve. Today I'll be talking about the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park rpg supplement!

I've been continuing to mess around writing for Heart (in fact, you can read some more of my design work in the 70-page fanzine , recently published, which includes really fun writing from a plethora of others), so today I'm back with a review of Bloodthirsty , by E.R.F. Jordan! 

I'm back with another month's worth of adventure! For March, we read A Pound of Flesh , the Mothership module by by Donn Stroud, Sean McCoy, and Luke Gearing, with illustrations by McCoy and Jan Buragay. The text has two primary modes; one for establishing the setting, and one for running the three scenarios in the setting. I think both valences of the text are really good! So, once again, I'll be digging a little into the text to talk about what works for me and what didn't.

For February, the Adventure Calls reading club read 50 Fathoms , a pulpy pirate-y pointcrawl / campaign setting for Savage Worlds. It's a big one! I wound up thinking a lot about the social fabric the text imagines.